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Amos Goldbaum

Amos Goldbaum didn't set out to become known for making T-shirts of skylines. But after setting up shop curbside, the San Francisco–based illustrator, painter, muralist, and street peddler gained a following from tourists and locals alike. Shirts, tanks, and onesies silk-screened with his line drawings of iconic San Francisco locales can now be seen all over the Bay Area. The success of his streetwear has allowed him to spend additional time creating art on more traditional mediums and nonarchitectural subjects, but with the same mechanically focused, line-driven technique.

Medium: IllustrationLocation: San FranciscoDate: 2015

For Dolby, Goldbaum went through the archives and selected three photos to illustrate. "The photos I was most drawn to were the ones of people interacting with the machines and consoles. They had a bunch of buttons, knobs, and levers. I liked that as a metaphor for creating any sort of art. A console's mechanics are analogous to using a pen or a brush," he says. From the source images, Goldbaum went to work just as he would with any other project: he first made a digital collage of the photographs that serve as his sketch. Then he proceeded to draw the piece by hand using pen and ink. The completed drawing was scanned into his computer and translated to a vector image that could be made larger or smaller and printed on a T-shirt or, in this case, as a vinyl decal for a wall for Dolby. "It is very technical, but still has a hand-drawn human quality to it. … I like the interaction between digital and handmade," Goldbaum says.

Amos Goldbaum

That contrast between the technological and the ethological is a theme that continues through the work. "My piece was an interpretation of how Dolby makes technologies that challenge and power human experience," he explains. "It's funny. We don't get to use [knobs and levers] anymore because of the advent of the touch screen. There used to be a much more tactile experience. … I wanted to shine light on that."